The Maine DOE Office of Special Services is clarifying the calculation of local entitlement funds under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). The federal requirement, maintenance of effort, may be calculated in four different ways:

Comparison of total combined state and local funding for applicable fiscal years;

comparison of combined state and local funding on a per student basis for applicable fiscal years;

comparison of total local only funding for applicable fiscal years; or

comparison of local only funding on a per student basis for applicable fiscal years.

The Maine DOE will calculate maintenance of effort using MEDMS financial data submitted by school administrative units based on combined State and local funding (methods 1 and 2 listed above). The Maine DOE does not collect local-only funding data and therefore is unable to do local-only calculations (methods 3 and 4). Therefore, SAUs that wish to use the local only funding comparison will need to do those calculations independently in order to demonstrate maintenance of effort to the Maine DOE.